Battle royal for our hearts and minds

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Prince Frederik and Princess Mary in Sydney yesterday at the start of a 13-day visit.Photo: Reuters

The Danish royal couple may be wowing them in Sydney on land and
sea, but let's not forget the more constitutionally relevant event
on the other side of the continent.

Late last night, the Prince of Wales (a small country to the
immediate left of England and the far left of Denmark) was to fly
into Perth at the start of his five-day tour.

Bringing up the discreetly nocturnal arrival of the
soon-to-be-wed heir to the throne at a time while another heir,
Crown Prince Frederik, and his wife (known in at least two
countries as "our" Princess Mary) are lighting up the eastern
seaboard with their youth, beauty and freshness, is rather like
interrupting a rave party with God Save the Queen.

But for formality's sake, and to appease those monarchists among
us, we had better let you know that after Charles has landed in the
west he heads for Melbourne via Alice Springs the day after
tomorrow.

The royal visitor and his entourage were flying in from a
one-day visit to Sri Lanka, where yesterday he inspected
tsunami-hit areas and met Hindu, Tamil and Muslim families and
relief workers, avoiding any political encounters with the rebel
Tamil Tigers. Their invitation to the prince to meet them was
politely declined. After touring the Batticaloa area in the east of
the island, the prince flew back to the capital, Colombo, to meet
the President, Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Royal tours are funny things. Fox hunting (perhaps not something
to mention to HRH) may be the unspeakable in pursuit of the
uneatable, but being a temporary part of the royal ratpack, with
its long lenses, dachshund microphones and portable stepladders, is
curiously similar - the inexcusable in pursuit of the
inscrutable.

Unlike hunting, though, the media and their quarry need each
other: one for news purposes; the other for publicity - maybe, in
this case, to persuade those who might think of Canberra and
Copenhagen as twin cities that the reality is still closer to
London pride than Danish blue.

The House of Windsor is really in charge, not the House of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, to which Frederik and his
family belong.

Not that the tours are in any geographic competition: Prince
Frederik and Princess Mary are in Sydney for the entire time of the
Prince of Wales' tour - and Charles visits Sydney briefly but
busily on Friday afternoon.

Where to from here? Today, Prince Charles' schedule includes
visits to the Royal Perth Hospital burns unit, a lobster farm
(perhaps the closest he will get to a detention centre), and
something called the Co-operative Research Centre for Plant Based
Management of Dryland Salinity, where he will be for almost the
same amount of time it takes to say it.

Will Perth's population turn out by the thousand to cheer the
future king? Read on, read on.